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him.
    â€œAnyway, today was a really bad day and what happened was, she hurt herself because she was feeling so terrible. So where she is, is in a hospital. She’s been to two hospitals today, actually. The first one was because she made her wrists bleed pretty bad, so we had to get that fixed up. And then she had to go to another hospital where they’re going to take care of her for a while and make sure she doesn’t want to hurt herself any more. You see?”
    No. Roddy stared, but he sure didn’t see.
    How did his dad know all this, for one thing? He worked all day. “She phoned me,” his dad said, as if he could hear what Roddy was thinking. “I called an ambulance and met her at the first hospital. See though, that’s a good thing, that she called. It means she didn’t want to, uh, she didn’t want to hurt herself too bad. And she didn’t want you to be scared when you came home from school. Because she was real sick today, but she was thinking of you and that’s a good sign.”
    Roddy slid off the sofa and stood in front of his dad. “Let’s go see her.”
    His father shook his head. “We can’t, I’m afraid. The hospital doesn’t want us to. Anyway she’s too sick.”
    â€œHas she got bandages?”
    â€œSome, yes. Just on her arms.”
    She’d cut herself? On purpose she made herself bleed? When Roddy skinned his knees, or had a nosebleed, his mother got a wrinkly look while she put on the antiseptic and bandages or had him tilt his head back and wrapped ice cubes in tea towels. She didn’t like blood. Why would she make herself bleed? His eyes narrowed. Could his father be lying? Had he made up this story to hide something different, or worse? “I want to go see my mum.”
    â€œI know you do, son.” His dad sighed. “But we can’t. I’m sorry, but we can’t.” He did look sad. Not the way Roddy’s mother could look sad, like her face had gone dead, but like he might cry. And then he looked right at Roddy and put his face into another arrangement and said in a new, louder voice, “So it’s just us boys, we can do what we want, so what do you feel like? We could go bowling, or a movie, whatever you’d like. Or we could make popcorn and watch TV till bedtime. What do you say?”
    What Roddy would have said, if he dared, was how come his dad didn’t always go to movies or whatever with his mum when she wanted? He shrugged. “I don’t care. When’s Mum coming home, tomorrow?”
    â€œNot tomorrow. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” was never a good thing.
    Who turned up the next day instead of his mother was his dad’s mother, with a couple of suitcases. She didn’t live all that far away, only in a town instead of the city, and Roddy liked her but only knew her from visits, really. She kept hugging Roddy. Watching TV, she’d reach out and draw him into her cushiony side and they’d sit together on the sofa like that. But days went by, and she couldn’t tell him enough about his mother, and he still wasn’t allowed to go see her. “I know you miss her, honey,” his grandmother said, “but she’s too sick to have company.”
    He couldn’t figure out what sick meant. Was she throwing up? He kept trying to find different ways to ask because maybe he just wasn’t saying it right, so nobody knew how to give the right answers.
    â€œNo, honey, she’s not throwing up, they could probably fix it more easily if she was sick that way. She’s sick another way, inside her head where it’s harder to fix.”
    â€œIs she going to die?” The first time he asked that, it took all his courage, but after that it got easier because the answer was always the same good one. “Oh no, it’s not the kind of sickness that makes people die, don’t you worry